


Our Darkest Moments

by random_chick



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha has a past, one she's always trying to atone for. Some days she manages, some days she doesn't, and she's made peace with that fact.</p><p>Until a series of killings and other incidents begins, a series of killings and incidents that are reminiscent of things Natasha herself has committed. Intrigued and more than a little worried, Natasha takes off -- with Clint in tow -- to investigate. What she finds is another victim of the Red Room, a victim identical to Natasha. Is she a clone? Is she a trick? Only time will tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was dark out, which was one thing. It was cold and rainy out, which was another thing entirely. She had been trained to work in any situation, in any environment; that didn’t mean she _liked_ working in the rain. It made things more difficult, added in an entirely new set of complications and risks. She could work with risk, but she didn’t like it. What person in her situation would? She had a job to do and damp, muddy conditions weren’t going to help a damn bit.

Though the rain was ruining her visibility, it was giving her the dubious benefit of hiding her from others. The young woman slipped along the side of the building, sticking to the shadows as much as possible. Getting caught now, when she’d only barely started after her target, would show her employers that she was sloppy, that she was a mistake, that she was of no real use. As much as she didn’t always enjoy her job, she wanted to be _good_ at it. Sloppy did not equal good.

The sound of a door slamming open made her freeze; she plastered herself up against the wall and held her breath, waiting for whoever was coming out to pass by.

And luck was with her; the man who’d emerged from the building was her target. Taking a split second to thank whatever force ran the universe, she slid forward, drawing her knife from the sheath attached to her ankle. Not the weapon she’d been hoping to use, but she wasn’t going to wait in favor of a better opportunity that might never come. Cursing the height differential, she drove the knife into the man’s lower back and twisted. Holding her breath, she pulled the knife out and allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction as the man dropped to his knees. She dropped the blade to the ground and pulled her gun from the waistband of her pants. The silencer came from one of the pockets of her cargo pants; she screwed it on quickly.

She could have said something to the man, could have engaged him in what would have probably just turned into him pleading for his life -- they always pled for their lives -- but there wasn’t time for that.

Before she could change her mind, she brought the gun up and put a bullet into the back of the man’s head. Her gloved hands sweating despite the chill in the air, she unscrewed the silencer and pocketed it before replacing the gun.

She could have been more careful, she could have taken more pride in her work, but she wasn’t in the mood. She was... tired, actually. Already tired of being used. Tired of being a tool. Tired of so many things.

This was the start of changing all that.

 

Natasha Romanoff could be either a morning person or a night owl with frightening ease, but even she didn’t handle a red eye back to the States with as much grace and dignity as one might expect of her. She’d been on assignment for several weeks and she’d barely slept for most of it, so she’d spent almost the entirety of the flight sound asleep. It was that reason that she was as awake as she was while making her way off the plane.

 _ **Just landed,**_ she texted Clint. The two of them were partners and while yes, they were grown adults who didn’t need to keep track of each other’s every movement, the fact was that they _liked_ keeping track of each other. It was oddly calming, having someone to worry about her.

 _ **What’re your plans for today?**_ came Clint’s response a moment later.

 _ **Debriefing with Montrose.**_ Agent Montrose was the SHIELD agent who’d taken over as her handler while Coulson was recovering from his injuries. Natasha didn’t have much of an opinion of the woman yet, aside from a calm gladness that the woman knew how to do her job. There hadn’t been enough interaction yet for her to learn anything beyond that about the agent and she didn’t care enough to go into Montrose’s file. It might’ve seemed a little cold, but Natasha was only concerned about getting along with Agent Montrose for as long as it took for Coulson to heal up and come back.

_**I’m actually in town. For a definition of ‘in town’ that actually means ‘in a city three hours away’. Want to meet up later?** _

Natasha’s response was a quick affirmative -- she could just picture the hesitation on Clint’s face as he figured out how to phrase that invitation. He wasn’t as hesitant with her as he’d been several months earlier, after Loki had done his number on Clint’s head, but he was still regaining his confidence. For that reason alone, Natasha would never tell him no.

Pocketing her phone, she headed to catch a cab. Since she did indeed have a few hours to kill before her debriefing, she was going to stop off at her favorite eatery, a little all-night diner frequented by SHIELD agents due to its proximity to headquarters, and indulge in the truly sinful pancake-and-sausage platter they had. She hadn’t eaten in something like twenty-four hours; the slender assassin was freakin’ starving.

As she settled into the back seat of the cab a few minutes later, Natasha allowed herself a small, content smile at a job well done, at being home, at being able to settle into her usual down-time routine. It was an easy routine, one she could settle into anywhere, but there was something about being in this particular city that made it easier than most. (Her favorite was the tiny apartment she had in Seattle. She rarely used it, but oh did she love it.)

Pulling her phone from her pocket, she settled in to play a mindless game.


	2. Chapter 2

Breakfast over, Natasha was at SHIELD headquarters a couple hours later. She wasn’t entirely looking forward to the debriefing, largely because she wanted to go home and keel over in bed to catch up on sleep.

Only they didn’t even get to the debriefing.

Natasha stopped by Montrose’s office, only to find her already in a meeting -- with Director Fury.

“A simple debriefing doesn’t merit a visit from the boss,” Natasha said, leaning against the doorframe and hiding both her curiosity and that slight feeling of worry. “What’s up?”

“We have a problem, Agent Romanoff,” Fury said. “Rather a large one, as it would turn out.”

“Define problem,” Natasha said warily. Because with SHIELD, their definition didn’t necessarily match up to _her_ definition.

“As you may or may not know, SHIELD’s database has a good deal of information about your activities,” Fury said.

Natasha nodded. “Much of it information I contributed myself.” Not all of it, but some of it. The rest of it was due to SHIELD’s formidable information-gathering skills.

“There’s been a flag on the information ever since you joined us,” Fury continued. “In the event a similar kill to one of yours is committed, an alert would be sounded. It hasn’t happened in all the time you’ve been with us.”

The “until now” went unspoken and hung heavy in the air.

Natasha froze for a second. “What are we going to do about it?” she asked, recovering enough to pull herself together and school her face into an impassive expression.

“You’re going to go investigate,” Fury said. “Take Agent Barton with you.”

“Okay.” Her mind was already going into action mode. “What do I need to know first?”

“We haven’t been able to get a clear shot of the target on any security cameras, which means they’re smart,” Fury said. “We’ve got a location, though. Current as of yesterday and the most recent occurrence.”

“Most recent?” Natasha cocked her head. “How many occurrences have there been?”

“Nine,” came the reply.

She frowned at that. Nine kills mirroring kills in her past. “I want files on each and every mirror kill, as well as my originals,” she said, knowing full well that if files on the mirror kills didn’t already exist, they could be in her hands in less than an hour. Less than half an hour, depending on who got the assignment.

Fury nodded. “Montrose? Do it.”

It wasn’t the ordinary scope of her job, but it made sense in a way for Agent Montrose to be doing it, given that she would be Natasha’s SHIELD contact should the other agent need any backup. She _should_ know what was in the files, should know them almost as well as Natasha herself would know them.

“On it,” she said. “I’ll have someone pull the original files while I compile the mirror kill files; it shouldn’t take more than forty-five minutes or so.”

“Have someone deliver them to the conference room at the end of the hall,” Natasha said. “I have a feeling I’m going to need some room to work.”

 

Natasha spent the time waiting for the second set of files going over the original kill files. She remembered them, of course, but she was reading them with an eye towards the specifics of each kill; she was hoping that the kills were just reminiscent of her own and not actually full-on mirrors. If they were full-on mirrors, they had a problem.

Because if the kills were full-on mirror killings, then only one group of people could be behind it -- the people running the Red Room. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with another student of the Red Room. Whoever it was? They were highly intelligent and highly trained, which meant it would be highly difficult for Natasha and Clint. Not that Natasha was afraid of difficult assignments, but she’d worked _hard_ to get away from the Red Room and the legacy it had left. She’d gotten away and hadn’t ever wanted to look back.

Only now she had to.

It did bring up an interesting question, though; why mirror _her_ kills? There were plenty of talented SHIELD agents who had more than a handful of kills on their hands to work from. Did it mean that whoever this was had it out for her? No, more likely they wanted her attention.

Only _why_ did they want her attention?

She was still mulling this over when a junior agent brought the files in. She gave the young man a distracted nod and an equally distracted smile before turning her attention to the files.

It took her all of ten minutes to realize that no, it wasn’t just a case of these murders being vaguely reminiscent of her own, or even just bearing a strong resemblance or two in certain spots. (Not that she’d seriously thought that, but even a jaded girl like her could hope.) No, these were pretty much detail for detail the same. Oh, locations were different, and in a few cases careers of the victims were different, but that was it. Everything else was exactly the damn same.

Whoever this was was off to a nice start on a red ledger of their own, she noted. Only she somehow doubted this person would feel as badly about it as she had come to.

She paired the files off -- each mirror with its original -- and then stuck her head out into the hall to flag someone down and request some supplies. She needed to map this all out in front of her and she couldn’t do that just by looking through the files.

She returned to the table to discover her phone buzzing and vibrating its way along the surface. She picked it up.

_**Just got the call. It’ll be another hour or so, but I’m on my way in.** _

Natasha let out a sigh of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It’d be good to have Clint on this with her. Good for them both.


	3. Chapter 3

She couldn’t believe SHIELD hadn’t put two and two together yet, that they hadn’t figured out what was going on. She hoped they figured it out soon -- she wasn’t entirely sure how much longer she could remain a tool of the Red Room and the men who ran it.

She couldn’t even take a twisted kind of comfort in the fact that she was good at what she did. At least not for nine of her kills. Nine of them had copied Natasha Romanoff almost to the letter. While she had pulled them off almost to perfection, they weren’t even hers. They were nothing she could take credit for.

Not that she wanted to take credit for killing anymore. She was trying to find solace in anything she could, no matter how much sense it did or didn’t make when looked at it by a normal person. Why _would_ it make sense when looked at by a normal person? She herself was anything but normal.

She dragged her fingers through her hair, wishing absently that it was long enough to pull up into a ponytail. She couldn’t have that, though, had been taught at an early age that long hair meant something that your opponent could grab onto in a fight and use to pull you in even closer.

She sighed and sat back in her chair in the small set of rooms she lived in. She didn’t have much that wasn’t furniture of some sort, but she didn’t need much. Just books to read, to engage her mind and keep her learning. And a television, for watching what few programs she found interesting. She wasn’t like most people her age -- she didn’t like all those stupid silly little shows that her age group typically found so fascinating, she didn’t like partying, she didn’t like much of anything except doing her job and being good at it, even if she didn’t actually like what she did.

Yes, it was a contradiction that she loathed what she did but wanted to take pride in it. It made sense to her, though. Just because she didn’t like her employment didn’t mean she couldn’t take pride in a job well done.

She would be working for the men who had trained her for a long while, it looked like. At least, she would be if SHIELD didn’t get its act together and catch on to what she was doing soon.

She wasn’t sure whether that was depressing or... no, she supposed it was just depressing. But it was a fact she would have to deal with, and so she did. She’d never been one for dwelling on the downside of things -- and this was a considerable downside. But she didn’t dwell, she just set about changing whatever she could.

And she would change this if it killed her.

 

Natasha had dismantled the files and set things up the way she wanted it in short order; Clint walked into the conference room only to come face to face with half a dozen dry erase boards with pictures taped up, timelines scribbled out, and God only knew what else.

“You’ve been busy,” was all he managed.

“Course I have,” Natasha said, not looking back from where she stood scribbling a note on a dry erase board next to one of the pictures she’d taped up. “Had to. If I didn’t...” She trailed off and shook her head.

Clint knew what she would’ve said, though. If she hadn’t stayed busy, she would have started dwelling. And Natasha’s head when she was dwelling on the past was a scary, tormented place that it took her entirely too long to crawl out of .

“”So tell me, then,” he said, turning slowly to survey Natasha’s work. “What have you got?”

“As they told you when they called you in, someone’s mirroring my kills,” Natasha said. “What I’ve figured out is that they are almost detail-for-detail the same. Minor things here and there, yes, but the important things are the same in each mirror.”

“Which means what?” Clint studied the nearest board thoughtfully.

“I’m not sure what it means,” Natasha said. “But I do know that it’s something we have to figure out. And we have to find who’s doing this and stop them.”

“But we don’t know where they are,” Clint replied.

“It’s going to be difficult figuring that out,” Natasha conceded. “But I have a theory.”

“What would that be?”

“After each of these kills, I went back to a specific city,” she said. “I had several other assignments in between them, sometimes more than several assignments. But after each one of the original kills being mirrored, I had a base of operations I went back to.”

“Then I think it’d be a reasonable assumption that that’s where we need to go,” Clint said. “It’s a place to start, at any rate.”

Natasha nodded. “And Clint? Thank you.”

“For what?” Clint asked curiously, arching an eyebrow.

“For going with me,” Natasha said. “I know it’s your assignment, but you’re still my friend and it means a good deal to have you with me.”

If this went south, she would have him at her back to help her out of it. There was nothing possibly more reassuring than that.

“I have your back and you have mine,” Clint said with a shrug and a small smile. “It’s what we do.”

Natasha nodded. “So now that I’ve figured this out, we go to Fury and tell him.” She was pretty sure that this was going to result in her and Clint being sent to another country to chase down the killer. She was perfectly alright with that. She wanted a chance to stop whoever it was. Whether said chance would work or not remained to be seen. And even if it did work, it wouldn’t be easy.

But things in her life had rarely been easy; she saw no reason why that should change now.


	4. Chapter 4

Fifteen minutes later, they were in with Fury. Clint didn’t know if the other man could pick up on it -- though it wouldn’t surprise him -- but he could see the worry and fear in Natasha’s eyes. That he could pick it up at all meant that she was doing a terrible job of compartmentalizing, which in turn meant that this was really, truly shaking her. Because while she was only human, true, she was human with extreme training in compartmentalizing and putting things away to deal with them later -- or never, in some cases -- and seeing her like this was something entirely unsettling.

“The two of you are going in,” Fury said. “Do what you have to do in order to track this person down. Preferably alive, but not necessarily a must.”

Natasha nodded and pushed up from the chair she’d settled into. She barely acknowledged it as they were dismissed -- it’d been a short meeting but really, how much time had they really needed for Fury to tell them that they were going in -- and she headed out of the office.

Clint followed after her, also barely acknowledging the dismissal. “Tash?”

“What?” Her voice was curiously flat and emotionless.

“Are you okay?” It was a ridiculous question, he _knew_ she wasn’t okay, but he couldn’t help but ask anyway. He worried about her under the best of times -- it was what partners and friends did -- but she’d stuck by him even during the mind control thing. She’d found a way to snap him out of it. And more importantly, she’d stuck by him after the fact. He’d stick by her in return, no matter what.

“No,” Natasha said after a long moment of considering half a dozen replies and discarding them all enough. “I don’t like this, Clint. I don’t like it one bit.”

“I know you don’t,” Clint said. “I don’t, either. Because why would someone be mirroring your past kills?”

“Easy,” Natasha said, shrugging with a casualness that she didn’t at all feel. “They want to get our attention.”

“Fair enough,” Clint allowed as they walked down the hall. “But _why_ do they want to get our attention?”

“I haven’t managed to figure that out yet,” Natasha said. “But whatever the reason is, it can’t be anything good.”

Situations involving their past never were, Clint noted with a sour smile as they reached the elevator. They never were.

 

Clint and Natasha were booked on a SHIELD jet leaving in three hours; this gave Natasha and Clint just enough time to run to their respective residences and pack. If it were an undercover assignment, Natasha would of course have had an identity and all it required set up for her. Since it wasn’t, she was on her own.

It didn’t take her long, given that she always kept a bag packed and ready in the closet for moments just such as these; she knew Clint did the same.

She was grateful for the fact that Clint hadn’t tried offering to come by her place with her. It gave her the time to breathe for a second and pull her head back together. She needed to be on top of her game for this, never mind that it was something as supposedly simple as tracking someone down. She and Clint had done this before, though not under these exact circumstances. She saw no reason why it wouldn’t work out this time.

Except she did, if she were completely honest with herself. Only, she didn’t _want_ to be completely honest with herself -- and she could at least be honest enough to admit to _that_. There were plenty of reasons why this entire situation could either work out or fail miserably, and she wasn’t at all sure which way it would go. She didn’t like the uncertainty, didn’t like it one bit.

But, she reflected as she pulled the bag from the front closet where it was always stored, she would deal. She would pull herself together and face things head-on and deal and if she fell apart, she would fall apart _after_ everything was all over.

Because she was Natasha Romanoff, damn it. She was tough, she was strong, she was fierce, she was determined, she was a highly trained assassin who didn’t fall apart at the sight of a little trouble, even if it _was_ personal trouble and something she’d never in a million years expected to face. Then again, nobody ever expected to face trouble -- except someone in her line of work, she supposed. Her line of work was built on trouble, on conflict between people, on being someone willing to carry out potentially dirty tasks so somebody else didn’t have to.

She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair, pulling her attention back to the here and now instead of being lost in the thousand and one details she had to be considering. She could worry about those once she was on the flight -- and she would. Oh yes, she would.

Taking a deep breath to fortify herself, Natasha left the nondescript apartment. As much as she had that momentary urge to turn tail and run away from it all, she knew that wouldn’t help. So she’d go catch the flight, she’d figure out who the hell was behind this all, and she and Clint would take care of it. A gross oversimplification of the problem, perhaps, but it also boiled it down to the most important parts. There was a problem and she and Clint would take care of it. That was what they did.

Feeling ever so mildly better about the entire situation, Natasha forced herself to think about anything but the problem at hand for a few minutes. Not that things weren’t serious, but if she dwelled overmuch, she would throw herself off again and the last thing she wanted was to be off her game. She wanted to solve this, not end up dead as a result.

Dead would just complicate things, and Natasha’s life was complicated enough.


	5. Chapter 5

Half an hour later, Natasha and Clint were settling in on the jet. Ordinarily they’d have caught a regular flight, but given the conversations they’d be having, Fury had decided it was better to send them on a private jet, something neither assassin had argued with.

Natasha leaned back in her seat and sighed. “I have a bad feeling about this, Clint,” she said, turning her head to glance over at him.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Natasha replied. “I mean, obviously it’s wrong. But something just feels off about it beyond what’s already off.”

Clint frowned thoughtfully. Natasha was ordinarily calm and analytical; if she was talking about feelings and hunches, then odds were she was more unsettled than she wanted to admit to. He wasn’t going to press her about that, had more respect for her than to do that, but at the same time… he was curious.

Natasha knew Clint was curious, too. She supposed she didn’t blame him, but how did she even begin to talk about this? How did she bring up what the Red Room had done to her? How did she bring up things she wasn’t actually sure she did or didn’t remember?

The answer was, she sucked it up and dove right in.

“You know how I worked for the Red Room, right?” she asked, with the tone of someone easing into a difficult conversation rather than someone who was actually double-checking on what somebody knew.

“Right,” Clint said with a nod. “And I know you worked for them for a while.”

“Well, it was a _long_ while,” Natasha said. “And they did things to me, things that I don’t remember. Which terrifies me, simply because of what I _do_ remember.”

“Makes sense,” Clint said. “In a twisted kind of way, because it’s the Red Room and they’re not exactly long on kindness towards their subjects.”

“No, they’re not,” Natasha said, suppressing the urge to shudder. She wasn’t going to break down, wasn’t going to fall apart, wasn’t going to do anything except keep talking. “And I’m just worried that what if what they did to me is somehow tied to what we’re going to investigate.”

“How do you mean?” Clint asked, tilting his head curiously.

“What if, whoever this is… they made me train them?” Natasha asked. “I mean, it would explain how they’re able to so eerily mirror my kills. It’s like they know me. No, it’s like they _are_ me. But obviously they aren’t, so there’s some other explanation. And the only one I can think of is that they made me train this person a very long time ago.” She knew she was babbling, knew it was thoroughly unlike her, but she couldn’t help it.

Clint, for his part, didn’t say a word about the babbling. If Natasha was having a hard time dealing with what was going on, who was he to point out that she was acting very much unlike she normally would? It wouldn’t do them any good and she’d probably just kick him in the kneecaps for it, anyway. And Natasha kicked really damn hard.

“It’s always possible,” he said. “Because if they did things to you that you don’t remember, that could encompass a lot of things. And it’s a more comforting alternative than some of the possibilities.”

Natasha nodded. “And the way they tinkered with my mind, there’s the possibility that I don’t remember a lot of things.” That wasn’t comforting, either, but it allowed for the possibility that there were other alternatives to this situation.

“Exactly.” Clint sighed. “So, for now, I suggest we just try and get some rest -- because I have a feeling that we’re not going to get much rest for the rest of the trip.”

Natasha nodded her agreement before putting her head back. For a few hours, she was going to sleep -- or at least try to. And then she was going to analyze the ever-loving hell out of the situation.

Not that she was going to figure anything out, she had a feeling, but she couldn’t not do _something_. She just didn’t have that in her.

 

By the time the flight landed, Natasha had spent several hours trying to sleep and most of it trying to puzzle out some kind of answer for the situation they were in. One of those had been more productive than the other, and it wasn’t the trying to puzzle something out.

She was grateful to be on the ground, though, for the simple fact that they knew what the next part of their course of action was -- heading to her old apartment. She had no idea if anybody was living there now, but even if they were… she’d find a way to get them out. She needed the apartment more than they did at the moment, no matter who they were.

“We heading to a hotel first or going right to your old place?” Clint asked.

“We’ll have our things sent on to the hotel and head over to the apartment,” Natasha replied. “It’s best we get to the apartment as soon as we can. We don’t want to run the risk of missing something.”

“True enough,” Clint said. “I’ll go make the arrangements.”

As Natasha waited, she let her mind turn back to the task at hand. There were any number of possibilities for what was going on, some she could name for certain and some she wasn’t entirely sure about but was more than willing to accept as likely given her history with the Red Room. It was all just a matter of figuring out what was the likeliest.

Or… really, did she have to figure anything out at all? Couldn’t she just run with it and see where they ended up? If she spent too much time trying to pin down any one likelihood, she might miss the actuality and that could be dangerous.

Shaking her head, Natasha came to the decision to… not let it be, exactly, but to not try getting wrapped up in deciding what was going on. She was going to be open to whatever the answer actually was and then she was going to kick it’s ass right into closure.

That decision made, she felt ever so slightly better about things.

Except possibly not nearly better enough.


	6. Chapter 6

She stood in the shadows outside the apartment building. It was a tiny building, with even tinier apartments, in a part of town that wasn’t exactly the best. But she knew it had served Natasha’s needs well enough and it was serving hers as well.

She wasn’t sure how long it would take Clint and Natasha to show up, but she knew they were on the way -- she’d managed to track them from the airport and beat them from the airport to the apartment building, so she knew it wouldn’t be too much longer.

She was grateful for the fact that they were in the city now. Things would be over soon, however the end played out. She had to admit she was looking forward to that. She was just so damn tired of her job, her life, of being something and someone she didn’t want to be. She wanted out. However that out came to be, she would take it. Even if it meant her death.

And the frightening part was that she wasn’t even all that afraid today. She blamed that on the fact that her life had never truly been her own. She’d been raised by the Red Room from as early on as she could remember and probably even earlier than that. But of course there was nobody she could actually ask; nobody would give her an answer, for one thing, and for another they’d probably just kill her for asking. As much as she wanted an end to it, she didn’t want to be killed for asking her questions.

Her life was really damn complicated, she’d decided long ago.

She leaned against a wall, careful to still stay in the shadows as she watched the front of the building. Since she’d been barely in front of them on the race back to the building, she was reasonably certain Clint and Natasha would be along shortly.

And in fact, there they were, Natasha in the lead and Clint a few paces behind her.

The young woman smiled to herself. Now that they were there, finally there, everything could begin. For better or worse, the end was about to come.

Taking a deep breath to fortify herself -- because even as a damn good assassin in her own right, she still had nerves -- she stepped forward into the light.

 

Clint was about to approach the building when someone stepped forward and ran into him. He said nothing, would have just kept on going, were it not for Natasha’s sudden exclamation in Russian. He’d spent enough time around her to pick up a few bits of the language, enough to know that she’d been swearing in surprise.

Before he could ask Natasha what was wrong, the figure was running away and Natasha was telling him to go after them. He listened to her without so much as an inkling of a second thought. If his best friend and close colleague told him to do something, he was damn well going to do it -- or at least strongly consider doing it.

The person ahead of him weaved through the crowd almost effortlessly, with a surprising grace that Clint couldn’t help but find familiar in a way he couldn’t describe. He shoved that thought to the back of his mind and kept on running. He put on a burst of speed, shoving someone out of the way at the same time -- he’d feel bad about it later, if he remembered to. He probably wouldn’t, though.

Swearing under his breath, Clint avoided running into an open door and lost a little time and distance between him and the person he was chasing. They were still close enough that he was able to begin closing the distance again. Whoever they were, they were fast -- but he was just a little bit faster.

He tackled the person, knocking them to the ground and yanking the hood back on their hoodie.

And then his world went just the slightest bit crazy.

“Natasha?”

He stared down at the girl, a slender blonde with his best friend’s face. “Who _are_ you?” he demanded. “Who are you and why do you look like Natasha Romanoff?”

“I don’t know why I look like her,” the girl said. “And as attractive as you are and as much as I ordinarily wouldn’t mind you pinning me down, how about you not do it in the middle of a crowded street?”

Clint rolled off the girl and got to his feet, holding out a hand to help her up.

She ignored the hand, though, and jumped gracefully to her feet. “We need to talk,” she said. “The three of us, we need to talk.”

“What do we need to talk about?” Natasha asked as she finally caught up with them just in time to hear that last bit.

The girl turned to look at Natasha, saying nothing.

Natasha paled. A thousand questions sprang to mind but she asked none of them. Instead, she said, “Back to the apartment, both of you.”

“Who lives there now?” Clint asked the girl. “Any idea, since you were lurking around outside?”

“It’s empty,” the girl replied. “Which is good, it’ll be a safe place to talk. Or at least as safe as can possibly be.”

Natasha knew there was the chance of the place being bugged by now, the chance of someone squatting there, the chance of about eighty other things that she wasn’t going to think about because she needed to focus on the problem at hand.

And this girl, whoever she was, was very much a problem.

They treked back to the apartment building, both Clint and Natasha keeping a wary eye on the girl. It didn’t take them long to break into the apartment, between their collective skill sets.

Natasha shut the door behind them, leaned against it, and looked at the girl. “Talk,” she said, folding her arms. “Give me one good reason not to put a bullet in your brain right here and now.” Whether she’d actually do it or not was really kind of up in the air at the moment.

“I want out.”

That wasn’t what Natasha had been expecting. “Excuse me?”

“I want out,” the girl repeated patiently. “I’m tired of being nothing more than the Red Room’s favorite little killer.”

Natasha suppressed a shudder. If this girl was the Red Room instructors’ favorite, then God help her.

“Listen… what’s your name?” she asked.

“I… don’t really have one,” the girl admitted. “I’ve gone by so many names over the years that they’ve all blurred together; if I ever really had a name, I’ve forgotten it.”

Natasha was pretty sure that counted as tragedy. “Then what do you call yourself?” she asked.

“I try not to think about myself,” the girl replied. “Thinking about myself only leads to thinking about who and what I am, and _that_ only leads to wondering if I’ll ever be the best. Except I’m tired of trying to be the best. I’m tired of trying to live up to their expectations. I’m tired of trying to please them when deep down, I know I never will.”

Natasha looked at the girl. “I felt the same way,” she said gently. “It’s why I took my Red Room training and ran as far away from them as I could get. It’s why I honed my skills and worked for myself, hiring myself out to whoever could pay. I was going to be the best on _my_ damn terms.”

The girl was silent for a moment, thoughtful. “Arina.”

“What?” Clint blinked at her.

“I like the name Arina. It’s one of my favorites. I knew a girl named Arina once. She was sweet. We played together a few times -- until I’d gathered enough information on her brother, a low-level diplomat with ties to something bigger. And then I went back home, never to see my playmate again.” She shrugged. “Always did think it was pretty.”

“Arina it is, then,” Natasha decided. “For now, anyway.” They could debate the logic of the name later. For now, it would give them something to call her.

“Good.” Arina allowed herself a small smile. “I meant what I said, though, Natasha. I want out with everything I’ve got in me. I want out with all my heart and the soul I’m not so sure I possess.”

Natasha could understand those feelings, remembered them all too well. Those feelings were how Clint had been able to sway her, to bring her over to SHIELD’s side. “You’ve been a busy girl lately,” was all she said.

“I did what I had to do to get your attention,” Arina said with a shrug.

“You killed people,” Clint said.

“The two of you can’t so easily condemn me for that,” Arina said. “The both of you have blood on your hands that will never come clean.”

“True,” Natasha said. “Neither of us exactly has a clear ledger. But you… you genuinely didn’t need to kill those people to get my attention.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Arina allowed. “But… it was what I had to do at the time. I couldn’t not do my work. So I used it to my advantage as best I could. Each and every one of those kills came at the hands of someone I worked for, but each and every one of those kills reflected yours as best I could. I knew that it would get your attention eventually. I have to admit, I was hoping it wouldn’t take as long as it did.”

Natasha nodded slightly. “I should have been quicker to put it together,” she said. “I should have realized there was something more to all of this.”

“But there’s no use beating yourself up over it now,” Clint said. “We need to deal with this situation; there’ll be time later for looking back and trying to figure out what could have been done differently.”

Natasha nodded again and looked at Arina. “So, you want out.”

“I want out,” Arina confirmed.

“It’s going to be risky.”

“And my life isn’t already?” Arina arched an eyebrow.

Natasha suppressed a smile. Arina really did remind her of herself at that age. Which brought up a question.

“Exactly how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Arina replied, and there was a hint of weariness to her voice.

It was a weariness Natasha understood all too well.

“If you want out, then… I’ll help,” she said, and with that, her entire life had changed -- she just didn’t realize it yet.

“Thank you,” Arina said softly, solemnly.

Clint looked at the two women. What _he_ wanted to know was why Arina looked so damnably like Natasha. Not just like a relative, but like Natasha herself. There had to be a reason, and knowing what he did of the Red Room, he knew it wasn’t anything good.

“So… what now?” Arina asked. “I mean, where do we go from here?”

“We’re getting you out of the country,” Natasha decided. “You’re leaving with us. And we’re leaving as soon as possible, before anybody can realize you’re gone. From there… well, we’ll hash that out once we’re in the air.”

Clint was already moving towards the door. “Let’s go.”


	7. Chapter 7

They left the apartment building one by one, just in case anybody was watching -- and Natasha had a bad feeling about all of it, all of a sudden. She was hoping that was just paranoia, though. But whether or not it was paranoia, she was going to do the best she could to make this situation work out favorably.

Unfortunately, the bullet suddenly whizzing by her head was a firm confirmation that no, this situation was not going to work out the way she was hoping it would.

“Get her to safety!” Natasha yelled, grabbing Arina and shoving her towards Clint. “We can’t let her get hurt, not now of all times.”

Clint just grabbed Arina’s arm and hauled her off after him, leaving Natasha to charge off after the shooter. In the chaos that’d erupted on the small street, it was easier said than done to find the shooter. Natasha was good, though, and knew exactly where the bullet had come from. It didn’t take her long at all -- just a few short seconds -- to find where the shooter had been hiding and then a second after that to charge after them.

She swerved around a panicky woman, following the shooter down an alley. All she could tell was that it was a woman, probably a little older than she was -- or than she appeared to be, that was. There was no way of telling if the woman really was her exact age or not -- given that they were running from the Red Room, anything was possible.

They reached the end of the alley and before the shooter could make another move, Natasha darted forward and grabbed her, spinning her around and slamming her up against a wall.

And now it was her turn to have the world flip upside down.

“Elena?” She hadn’t seen Elena in years, since before she’d switched to the side of good. The other woman had been even more dangerous than Natasha, something Natasha had long suspected but never wanted to believe -- she’d been arrogant, had thought she was the best. But if anyone could give her a run for her money, it was Elena.

“Hello, Natasha,” came the warm purr. “I’d say it’s perfectly lovely to see you again, but under the circumstances… well, since I’m trying to kill you… it really kind of is.”

And there it was, the twisted personality that Natasha had actually forgotten about for a bit.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not equally thrilled to see you,” Natasha said dryly. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to kill you. Well, her. Close enough.” Elena shrugged. “Point is, someone’s dying. Preferably her, given that she’s the one who wants out. But I’m not picky, really, and neither is my esteemed colleague who’s following the girl and your friend.”

Natasha tensed. “Clint won’t let them hurt her.”

“She’s trying to get away from the Red Room,” Elena said. “Do you really think they’ll let someone -- even Clint Barton -- stand between them and her death or recapture?” The smirk on her face said which of the two she was personally hoping for.

Natasha swore -- and in that second of distraction, Elena was running around her and back the way they’d come.

Natasha swore again and followed after, but this time it was no use. This time she lost the psychotic assassin in the crowd.

She came to a stop and scowled. She could only hope that Clint was having more success than she was.

 

If by “success” you meant “ending up with a bullet in his shoulder” then yes, Clint was having infinitely more success than Natasha.

Clint ignored the pain in favor of running behind Arina, pushing her and keeping her running as fast as the two of them could manage. “Don’t you dare try and stop running,” he hissed when Arina showed signs of wanting to stop. “So help me, I will beat your ass.”

“I’d like to see you try, old man,” Arina yelled back.

“Excuse me, I am not old,” Clint said, his voice tighter than he’d have liked thanks to the pain.

“I’m sixteen,” Arina shot back. “And you’re an assassin. Surviving to your age makes you old.”

Clint couldn’t really argue with that, not that he wanted to. So instead, he reached out to grab Arina as she stumbled, hauling her to her feet as he passed her and then shoving her in front of him. “Keep moving,” he said again.

“I _am_ ,” Arina snarled, her breath coming in ragged pants as she practically threw herself down an alley. “I may have been worked on by the Red Room, may have been augmented, but even my endurance has its limits.”

Clint just shook his head and grabbed Arina’s arm, pulling her into the shadowy recesses of the alley. “Alright, here’s the plan,” he said. “We need to get to a car and get to the airport.”

“We can’t just leave Natasha here,” Arina said.

Even in the darkness, Clint recognized the stubborn set of her jaw. “She’ll meet us at the airport,” he placated. “Natasha knows that our best hope right now is to _not_ try and meet up with each other again.”

“In that case…” Arina grinned breathlessly, running on adrenaline and a little bit of insanity. “I vote we hotwire a car and get the hell out of here.”

Clint nodded. They didn’t have any time to argue about the ethical or moral problems of stealing a car. In their careers, they often had to make the improper choices. This one would just have to be one in a long list for them both.

“And once we’re on the plane, Natasha and I can patch you up,” Arina said.

“No offense, kid, but I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. I’m not letting you near injured parts of my anatomy,” Clint said.

Arina looked away for a second. “Fine,” she said, looking back. “We don’t have time to argue.”

“No, we don’t,” Clint said. “So let’s just get moving.”

They continued on down the alley, coming out the other side of it. They could hear their pursuers in the distance, but they’d managed to gain themselves a bit of time and hopefully enough distance to get to where they needed to go.

And as Clint and Arina turned down the street and took off at matching runs, it was all Clint could do to keep running. The pain in his shoulder was starting to get to him, not that he would admit it. He could fall apart once they were on the jet.

He just hoped he didn’t end up face down in a pool of his own blood first.


	8. Chapter 8

Natasha got back to the airport and the waiting jet first. She paced back and forth in the aisle as she waited for Clint and Arina. As worried -- terrified, even -- as she was at the moment, she had to admit that the time by herself gave her time to start puzzling things through in her head.

Though the only thing she was really puzzling out at the moment was Arina’s resemblance to her. She’d worry about Elena’s resurfacing some other time, when she actually actively gave a crap about it.

There were a handful of possibilities that Natasha could think of that might explain why Arina looked like her. Plastic surgery, being a clone, being a distant relative, and maybe two or three others. Those were the most likely candidates, though, Natasha figured. Except she couldn’t quite decide which one of them was the most likely. The girl had been raised by the Red Room -- had been created by the Red Room, likely in the same ways that Natasha herself had -- so anything was possible.

“First aid kit!” Clint gasped as he and Arina stumbled inside the jet. “Now, Tash!”

Natasha stifled a gasp and instead ran for the first aid kit as Arina settled Clint into a seat. She was back a moment later, setting the kit down. “What happened?” she asked as she opened it.

“Got shot trying to get her to safety,” Clint said, giving a weak nod in Arina’s direction.

“Do me a favor and don’t bleed to death,” Arina called from where she’d collapsed into a seat of her own. “I don’t like being grateful to dead men. It seems somehow wrong.”

“I live to make people happy,” Clint said with a groan as Natasha probed his wound. “Ow! Watch it! That’s not the kind of pain I enjoy, thank you very much.”

“I know,” Natasha replied absently. “Now shut up and let me work. I’m going to have to dig the bullet out of the wound, I think. It’s gonna hurt. Again, not the kind of pain you enjoy.”

“Do I get to pass out after the bullet’s out?” Clint was addressing Arina with that, almost teasingly. It was hard not to take to her, despite her instabilities.

“Shit, you can pass out now for all I care,” Arina called back. “Just don’t bleed to death.”

“No bleeding to death,” Clint said. “Got it.”

Natasha just shook her head and went to work.

 

The three of them had spent the flight back to the States in different but similar ways. Clint had watched Natasha, Natasha had watched Arina, and Arina? Well, she’d spent most of the flight sleeping. But once they’d landed, she was wide awake and interested in her surroundings. Natasha supposed she couldn’t blame the girl for that. It was a different environment than in Russia.

Arina was stashed in an empty conference room while Clint and Natasha had a debriefing with Fury.

“She’s… something,” Clint said with a shake of his head. “I’m pretty sure that something’s psychotic, too.”

“Not psychotic,” Natasha corrected. “Or at least, no more than I ever was. I think a better word for it would be desperate. Because for all I’ve said about it in conversations and debriefings, the Red Room is something you never want to experience. I can’t blame her for wanting to get away.”

“ _Does_ she want to get away, though?” Clint asked. “What if it’s just some scheme to get to you?”

“I don’t think it is,” Natasha said. “I thought of that for a minute, but I don’t think it is. If it were, Elena wouldn’t have been chasing me _and_ wanting to kill Arina. Chasing me, yes, to throw me off the trail or something, possibly. Not with the also wanting to kill her.”

She frowned. “And as it was, Elena said something that worries me for an entirely different set of reasons.”

“And what would that be?” Fury asked.

“She said, ‘Trying to kill you. Well, her. Close enough.’ I can’t figure out what that means, other than it’s probably not a good thing.” Natasha ran a hand through her hair. “It makes me think that Elena and her cohort would have been happy killing Arina _or_ me, but that Arina was the actual goal. And I want to know _why_.”

“I want some tests run on her,” Fury decided. “We need to know what they’ve done to her, for starters. It’s possible that those answers will help us find the rest of the answers we want.”

“I hope so,” Natasha said. “Because I’ve got a feeling about this. I’ve had a feeling about this from the beginning. I was hoping it was just paranoia, because I’m Russian and we’re good at that. But I want to know for sure.”

“And once we know more, we can decide what to do with the girl,” Fury said.

Natasha nodded. “She needs to remain here in the country, Director. I know that without a doubt. If she leaves the country, if we send her back…”

“We’ll worry about what to do with her once we know more,” Fury said again. “I’ll have to campaign and pull some strings to get permission for her to stay, I have a feeling, but… well, if it’s what this comes to, then it’s what this comes to.”

Remarkably philosophical of the man, Clint thought.


	9. Chapter 9

Natasha was at Arina’s side as the tests were done and the bloodwork was run. For some reason, she just felt like it was a good idea to be with the poor thing, not that Arina wasn’t more than capable of worrying about her own damn self.

“You look worried,” Arina said to Natasha. “You don’t need to be.”

“Was it that obvious?” Natasha didn’t think it had been, but if anybody could read her besides Clint, she had a feeling it’d be Arina.

“Only to someone who knows you,” Arina said with a small smile. “Rather, only to someone who knows the way you grew up. Poker faces are a necessity for us.”

“What made you decide you wanted out?” Natasha asked suddenly, the question having been on her mind ever since Arina first said she wanted to get free.

“One assignment too many,” Arina said. “I’m tired of not being able to do what I want to do. If I use my skills, I want to use them for what _I_ want to use them for.”

God, it was like talking to her younger self, Natasha thought with a shake of her head. “I was the same way,” she said. “Only when I got out, I wasn’t terribly concerned with the morality of who I used my skills on behalf of.”

“I probably won’t be, either,” Arina said with a shrug. “If I take up my old job but for a different set of people, that is. Because, really… I’ll do what I have to do.”

“What if you could live a normal life?” Natasha asked thoughtfully. “Would you?”

“Define normal,” Arina said as the last vial of blood was drawn.

Natasha led her off to the side and to relative privacy before continuing. “Stability. An education that has nothing to do with being an assassin. A home life.”

“I have no family to have a home life with,” Arina pointed out. “Any family I have is probably long dead.”

Natasha nodded slightly. “True enough,” she allowed. “But you have me. I may not be family, and hell, I may not even be your friend. But you remind me so much of myself that there’s no way I’m going to let you fall back into your old life.”

“The great Natasha Romanoff, exhibiting weakness?” Arina drawled, but there was a vaguely teasing note to her voice.

Natasha shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s not weakness if it’s in the name of helping someone avoid growing up like I did,” she said. “You grew up with them long enough; now it’s time to finish growing up under a different set of circumstances.”

Arina frowned thoughtfully. “It sounds nice,” she said after a moment. “But it’s not going to be normal. _I’ll_ never be normal.”

“Normal enough,” Natasha said. “You could go to college, get an education in something _you_ want to learn about.”

Arina couldn’t deny the appeal of that idea. “I’m probably going to get stuck in a holding cell or something, though,” she said. “I don’t think anybody here likes me very much.” Not that she was terribly bothered by that.

“I’ll talk to Director Fury,” Natasha promised. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

“Thank you,” Arina said, giving Natasha a slight nod of thanks.

Natasha just hoped she _would_ be able to help.

 

The blood tests were back less than twelve hours later. An ordinary facility wouldn’t have been able to process them in that short a time, but SHIELD was no ordinary facility.

Fury called Natasha into his office, only to find Arina coming along with her. “I didn’t request her presence, Agent Romanoff.”

“We’re a package deal at the moment,” Natasha said with a wry smile. “We’ve been bonding over our mutual dislike of all things Red Room. As much as we can, anyway.”

Fury sighed. “I suppose it’s for the best, actually. Means I only have to reveal this once.”

“Reveal what?” Natasha asked suspiciously.

Fury studied the two women for a long moment. They looked dead on identical, a fact only accentuated by the way they were sitting in the same position. Given what he now knew…

He shook his head slightly. “There’s a reason for the resemblance, Agent Romanoff.”

“What is it?” Arina asked. “Is she my long-lost sister or aunt or something?”

“Or something,” Fury agreed.

Natasha didn’t like the sound of that. She just arched an eyebrow, though, and waited for Fury to continue.

“The two of you are identical,” he said. “Completely identical. Perfectly identical.”

“So?” Arina gave him a Look. “Anybody with eyes can see that.”

“It goes beyond the physical,” Fury said to her. “It goes right down to the fact that you two are one hundred percent genetically identical.”

“So wait, she’s my -- “

“Clone, yes,” Fury said, cutting Natasha off neatly.

Natasha paled slightly. “That shouldn’t surprise me nearly as much as it does,” she said. “Just when I thought the Red Room could sink no lower… well, they do.”

Arina glanced over at Natasha. “I suppose it makes sense,” she said. “Or at least, as much sense as anything.”

Natasha was more than a little overwhelmed, honestly. “So she’s… me?”

“Yes.”

Natasha swore softly in Russian. “What do we do now?”

“I pitch a case for her being allowed to remain in the country under an assumed identity,” Fury said.

Natasha looked to Arina. “Natalie Rushman’s little sister,” she said. “We can’t call her my little sister, because that would be too much of a tie to our past. But Natalie Rushman has no past like we do. So she becomes Erin Rushman instead.”

Fury just thought it through a moment before nodding. “That might be for the best.”

Natasha wasn’t worried about for the best, she was worried about making sure Arina had the best life she possibly could. She was family, actual family of a twisted sort, and Natasha wasn’t very good at having family. Closest she had was Clint. But she thought she might, just might be able to do this big sister thing.

Only time would tell.


End file.
